North Carolina’s first Buc-ee’s is still more than a year from opening, but the highway project built to handle its crowds is already reshaping one of the state’s busiest interstate corridors.
A roughly $50 million overhaul at Exit 152 in Mebane is widening Trollingwood-Hawfields Road and rebuilding its interchange with Interstate 40/85. The work is not a private driveway dressed up as a public project. It is a full interchange reconstruction, complete with a wider bridge, additional lanes, new drainage and a diverging-diamond traffic pattern.
The result will serve far more than a single travel center. It will also determine whether a fast-growing part of Alamance County can absorb the traffic generated by a 74-acre roadside destination expected to draw drivers from the Triangle, the Piedmont Triad and well beyond North Carolina.
The road project is halfway built
The interchange work was 50% complete by Oct. 19, with bridge widening 85% complete, water and sewer work 75% complete and stormwater improvements 65% complete, WFMY News 2 reported…